Testing out electric

Chief Beck is testing electric motorcycles from Brammo and Zero "to find their applicability for what we do," he said.

"I have to get them further before spending city money," said Beck, who presides over a $1 billion-plus annual budget that includes 4,000 patrol cars and 300 bikes "that use tons of fuel in the worst possible way – idling. We could have a lot smaller footprint."

Still, he said, the average motor officer logs 200 miles each day and electric motorcycles are only capable of traveling about 80 miles per charge.

"Right now, these are just unicorn projects," said Beck, who is also trying to get a Tesla Model S for patrol duty because "it's the responsible thing to do. It's what all of us have to do."

“On your marks,” a distant voice called from the dirt at Glen Helen Raceway. More than 100 motorcycles responded with a cacophony of snorting engines that dissipated into plumes of dirt as they headed into the first sweeping turn of a grueling one-hour race over hills, ruts and jumps.

Lost in the fray of the first hairpin was a racer whose helmet was the only indication of his identity. “Beck” was spelled on its jawline.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck.

Most Sundays, the head of the country’s third-largest police force can be found straddling his KTM and racing the sprawl of San Bernardino’s Glen Helen in a jersey that is, coincidentally, black and white. It’s a different type of uniform, and one he’s worn even longer than his badged and dry-cleaned blues. Beck has been racing dirt bikes since 1969.

Police work was actually Beck’s Plan B.

“Racing was what I wanted to do,” said Beck, who started competing in motocross at age 16. “I was a halfway student most of the time because all I did was work on motocross racing. My dad worried that was all I would ever do.”

Today, at 60, Beck’s dream of making a living as a professional racer is long gone, but his passion for motorcycles remains strong. His 10th-floor corner office at LAPD headquarters downtown is a shrine to modern motocross as much as it is command central for the police. A helmet from former world supercross champion Chad Reed rests on a credenza just steps away from a Ryan Villopoto poster and framed Jeremy McGrath jersey – all of them signed and given by the racers.

The 2011 X Games medal patterned after Beck’s police chief badge hangs on a wall near his desk. A bowl overflows with the awards he’s won in the police and fire motocross races in which he’s competed annually since the ’70s.

“My winning days are long gone. And my caring about winning days are long gone,” said Beck, who nevertheless competes every weekend.

On a recent Sunday, he placed third in the super senior class at Glen Helen, after which he was signing autographs.

“The groupies is what I do this for,” he deadpanned after the race, signing a photo for his friend’s 80-something mom.

Beck wasn’t accompanied by his usual bodyguard. At the track, he was just a garden-variety racer hanging out with a handful of friends, and that’s exactly how he likes it. He’s just one of the guys, doing what guys like to do.

It’s the same down-to-earth demeanor that has made Beck so popular with the 10,000 officers he oversees as chief. He is known as a “cop’s cop,” supported by the rank and file.

It’s the same kindness that prompted a prostitute he arrested more than 30 years ago to tell one of Beck’s fellow police officers at the time, “He’s nice. You should go out with him.”

She did, and they got married two years later.

Beck is so unassuming, in fact, that one of his best friends and long-standing riding buddies didn’t know his exact role within the LAPD until recently. Kirk Kovaleff had been riding and racing with Beck for 25 years before finding out.

“We knew he was LAPD, but we never talked about what he did until five years ago when we asked how many detectives he oversaw,” said Kovaleff, who met Beck through his older brother. “He has not changed one bit as chief. He’s steady Eddie.”

Beck said part of that steadiness is directly attributable to his experience as a racer.

“A lot of the things that attracted me to motocross are relevant in police work. They’re both very action oriented. There’s a lot of physicality to them. They both reward good judgment and punish bad judgment. It requires self-awareness, recognition of limitations,” Beck said.

“Making decisions on a motocross bike is very similar to making decisions in policing. You have to weigh the consequences, the risk/benefit. And they both involve adrenaline and the control of adrenaline, which is huge. A lot of mistakes police officers make it’s because they can’t control their adrenaline. Controlling adrenaline is hard.”

Beck got his first taste of racing – and the value of adrenaline control – through his dad’s brother, who lived in Lakewood and raced dirt bikes in the desert. The year was 1969, and Beck was in high school when he, too, started racing – an Ossa at first, then Husqvarnas and Maicos at the Greenhorn Enduro in Pasadena and Gardena’s Ascot Park.

For three years, he worked as a mechanic at Dowmen’s Cycle Center in his hometown of Long Beach and raced nights and weekends. Even as he attended Cal State Long Beach getting a bachelor’s degree in vocational studies, he indulged dreams of racing pro.

“It was obvious to everybody I was never going to get a whole lot better than I was,” Beck said. “I was good enough to win local races sometimes, but I was certainly never going to be a national-level rider, and that’s the only way to make any money.”

If Beck had been a more gifted motocross racer as a teen, Chief Beck would not exist.

It was only at the urging of his father, former Deputy Chief George Beck who retired in 1980, that Beck joined the Police Reserve Corps in 1975.

“My dad always put it out there: You might want to try this. He thought police work might fit, and he was right. He knew me better than I knew myself,” said Beck, who joined the LAPD two years later as a gang officer and began working his way up the ranks in narcotics and surveillance, from sergeant to lieutenant to captain to commander to deputy chief and, finally, chief in November 2009, succeeding William Bratton.

Beck has presided over one of the most dramatic reductions in violent crime in Los Angeles in the 41/2 years he has been in charge of the force; 2013 saw the lowest murder rate in the city since 1967. Since 2008, the city’s gang crime has fallen by half, he said.

“I don’t take personal credit. Law enforcement takes credit,” said Beck, who, even as chief, works once a month on patrol. “I go out, I roll on calls. I talk to cops, talk to people on the street in uniform, in a black and white just like everybody else. If you don’t pay attention to the folks that do the work, you’re a fool.”

Despite his decades as an off-road racer, Beck only recently completed LAPD training to be able to ride the BMW R1200RTP street bikes used by many of the city’s 280 motor officers.

Beck doesn’t just ride motorcycles. He has built dozens from scratch and owned at least 100.

Beck’s home garage picks up where his LAPD office leaves off. Lined with helmets and tool chests, it’s packed full with the nine motorcycles he currently owns, including the KTM 450 SX he races weekly and the vintage bikes he races less often – a 1981 Maico 490, 1967 Maico 360 and 1970 Norton Commando.

“I’ve had ’em all,” said Beck, the evidence of which he keeps in a plastic box. It’s stuffed with Polaroids of the popular Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha and Suzuki dirt bikes he’s owned, as well as more obscure models from BSA, Greeves and Montessa.

Beck and his wife, Cindy, have two daughters, ages 32 and 24, with “no interest in motorcycles,” Beck said. Their son, age 28, owns one of the KTMs parked in Beck’s garage but doesn’t ride it very often because “he spends too much time working and being friendly,” said Beck, whose son and one of his daughters are LAPD officers.

How much of Beck’s leisure time is spent riding or hanging out around motorcycles?

“If you ask my wife, she’d say all of my time,” he said. “I’m trying hard to do this the rest of my life.”

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